What the Bard Said
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Reigen has a story to tell you, dear reader- about magic and faith and doubt, and about the boy who began as a nobody but eventually became king. (Mob Psycho 100 Fantasy AU- circa the Separation Arc)
1. Chapter 1

C'mere.

Yeah, you. I'm not suspicious, promise. Seriously!

You know who I am- I'm the same bard from the little place down the way that serves spirits and such- no, I'm not trying to bring you in for tips. Well, I'd appreciate the money, but that's seriously not the point. I'm not looking for trouble. I'm a little drunk, and I feel like talking. That's all.

I've got a story to tell you. I just- I need to tell somebody.

It's not the story of my life- calm down. It's not about me.

Alright, it is, to an extent, 'cause it's mystory, but it's- it's about this boy I found. Or, this boy who found me- out of the blue one day, with this giant spellbook in his hands and this even bigger oversized robe covering over his watery eyes like some kind of freaky mourning veil or something. The older of a pair of brothers from the Shadow Mountains north of here. You heard of anyone like that before? No?

You don't like guessing games? How about I try his real name- Shigeo, first Mageprince of the House of Salt.

Yeah, _that_ one. _That_ boy from the Shadow Mountains. Makes you a little more interested, doesn't it? I know shit about his Majesty himself, the boy whose ass is currently sitting on the giant throne across the moat and past the gates right over there- so you can take your sass and shove it in your mouth so your listening ears can do their damn job.

So how's _that_ for a bard's tale?

I was his advisor, you know. The prince's. The king's. Whatever he is, now- it's changed. He was coronated recently- not that I'd been keeping up with it, or anything.

I taught him, actually. Not sure how much he learned, but, well.

He called me master, once, for whatever it's worth.

But you know what royalty does when they don't need you anymore- they cast you out like a bucket of fish left to sit an hour or five too long in the baking sun, and then watch you float around and spread your stink around to the rest of the folks swimming beneath you and desperately hoping not to get caught up in the next haul. They don't care what you did for 'em, or gave up in order to lift them up higher. They got what they wanted, and so now you're just chum to attract more suckers.

Anyway, but this isn't about me.

Mob.

I called him Mob, before he ascended up to the purple and above all the rest of us plebeians. He used to come around here to flip through his giant magician tomes, right? You saw him too- you're a local- the kid with the glazed-over expression and covered in weird painted runes all over his clothes? You remember him? He said they were magic seals, when I asked- that they could keep his power sealed inside of him. I thought he was shittin' me at first, but I've thought a lot of things in my life.

He was a Mage, like, a Wizard. Actually, that's probably not right. Mob was- is- a sorcerer, honestly. Yeah, the scary kind- the kind of magic user that can make something out of almost nothing. Magic, but in the truest, most mysterious, most unexplainable sense.

I didn't believe in magic before he came around. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I thought the surrounding Mage wars were all just a bunch of bullshit. I'm young, you know. Too young to know otherwise. And I'd never actually seen a real Mage with my own eyes since they conveniently had died out before they could see the new shape of the country they left behind, but now...

Now, I...

...I doubt, just a little bit. I doubt everything in this whole damn world, all because a boy in a bar with clothes that didn't fit him asked me if I could teach him to lock away his powers and read him some instructions from an old book he'd found in a shack somewhere. God knows where! I was stupid enough to say yes, because I wanted the attention and I wanted the power. I wanted to know what it's like to be extraordinary rather than some no-talent spectator on the sides.

Obviously, that didn't work out. I just couldn't hack it, not even with a goal or a bed or food. I'm not meant to be special, even with every advantage I get. I'm a bard, for cryin' out loud! I never thought I'd be just this, nothing but this! I thought by now, I'd definitely-!

No. Sorry. I'm just not... not myself. But this isn't about me. It's about Mob.

'Cause always, always. It's really, truly always been about Mob.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Author's notes: This is actually inspired by one of my original stories- I just transplanted the Mob Psycho 100 characters into it to give it a test run to see how it would work.

Also, it's really refreshing to use First Person point of view after usually being so didactic about a character's internal worlds. Kinda needed a break.

Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

I was relatively new to town, back then. I got sick of my lord, see, and the idea of teaching some pageboy how to be as pointlessly ineffectual of a knight as I was just seemed… anyway. I had never actually heard Mob say a word in the near-entire year we had been aware of the other's existence. It wasn't until, late one night, on a particularly dead Tuesday, he came up to me while I was sitting there shredding up my scrolls of stories and shoving them in my pipe to watch 'em go up in smoke that he appeared out of nowhere and asked me, with that soft, tiny voice of his, "Is it true you were a Mageknight? I thought you might be able to help."

He was half right, Mob was- I was a knight but never a Mage, and I always thought I was only the one because the other was a complete myth and a fool's errand, and that my living lord- one of the rare ones who managed to remain neutral when the fire and flames came out- outlawed it because he wanted to stop idiots from spreading around weird, mumbo-jumbo pseudoscience and keeping the type to believe such things out of his serfdom. That was a stupid assumption on my part- I'd never have imagined that fear and fear alone could suppress and choke out both the cause and the joy of an entire world crisis and empirical regime, but as it turns out, that's exactly what it was. I like to think I've learned a lot since then.

It's frightening, how much we think we know about something when we never took the time to really look. It's so arrogant, and so immature.

So Mob thought I was one thing, and I knew I was another- but I thought he was something else, too- crazy. I thought he was delusional. I gave him a little pep talk to brighten up his big, sad eyes and then convinced him to turn around and go home. And I went home, too, and thought about how many of the stories people fed me as a kid were also bullshit to make me leave them alone, and how many of them are true, and then I thought about something stupid so that I could just stop thinking at all.

But Mob, he wasn't done with me. He shows up the next day and the next day, and the next day. At first I hated it- and felt obligated to babysit this brat that wasn't mine- but then I started buying him milk, when they'd have it, and he would sit next to me on the stool I pulled up for him while I read off or made up some long epic to guests. You surely know that the stories I tell are ones I wrote a long time ago, when I was a younger person in a more comfortable and well-to-do rank. I'd wanted to write more of my own, but I stopped- I didn't have the drive anymore.

One day, Mob handed me his giant tome- that book of spells the size of his whole torso- or it used to be the size of his torso, back when I first met him. And you know what they actually are? What was actually in that book?

It's a journal.

Tales, and riddles. Hundreds of stories and limericks and poems and epics. He said to me, "I can't read these very well. Can you read them to me? A ghost told me the words in here can tell me about my power."

So I skimmed over a few, since, you know, what's it gonna hurt to play pretend for a little while? One, and then two, and then three. And they were all…

Riddles about death, and ones about twisting life, and how to make things grow into your will, and make them hurt. Descriptions of mirrors to nightmare worlds and entire universes spiraling through a tiny box, with people trapped inside for all eternity, until their souls came out and were lost and rotted inside the box. Stories about pain and how, if people use you, you must use them. Allegories of hell, and of problems with no solutions, and the details of a life lived unfulfilled- all handwritten. I didn't know at the time who owned the diary, but it was just so, so…

I told Mob to put away his book of cruel spells- and then I told him to return it to where he got it if he really thought it belonged to a ghost- and, lo and behold, the stupid thing was evil enough that, right in the face of my stout and disbelieving skepticism, it _did_.

God.

Damn it.

So, yeah. Mob refused to throw away the cursed book. It's one of the few things he ever became obstinate about with me, ever. Well, until recently- until I screwed everything up.

Mob said the book was a gift; he said giving it up would be like lying about some part of himself. I… I didn't pry too deeply, and what I did find out when he finally opened the book to the right page and read from it himself, I don't...

You know, I used to think _he_ wasn't real, either. That he was just a story. The old Magelord who ruled over the land on the hill- the place where nothing grows- the one who lived through the war only to kill himself. I used to tell stories about him, about his deeds. Keiji Mogami, the Wizard and Warlock they called the Idol. That was the owner of the journal, as it turns out.

He used to be one of my favorites to read about, to _play pretend_ about, to _imagine I met,_ and in the end, he-!

Damn it. Adults- we love to lie to children, don't we?

I thought it was best not to make him relive things he didn't quite understand yet, not until he was ready. That's all. I'm not sure if I made the right call or not, not even now, now that it's over and I've had time to think about it.

As for me, well. Kill your heroes yourself, my friend, and pray you never have the displeasure of seeing them for what they actually are before you do.

But, no. At the time, I couldn't justify asking Mob to let go of the stupid book- after all, we all have things we carry around with us but don't know quite why.

But I started making up new ones- stories, I mean, sometimes right on the spot- for Mob. I don't know why. I don't even know how many other people were listening most of the time, but I was just… better. I knew I was better when he was there, because he was a captive audience and he listened to me.

It was fun, sort of, even if I thought my child entourage and eccentric pest wasn't all there in the head. Actually, it was a lot of fun. Mob's a good kid. I've never had any kids myself, and I never wanted a pageboy to teach, but if I did, I'd like to think…

...If wishes were fishes, right?

One night, when it was particularly late and I was particularly careless, my clumsy ass knocked over a lantern like the moron I am, and the melted wax spilled everywhere on the straw littered on the floor, and the flame wasn't far behind. I thought the bar was about to light up for sure, but suddenly, the lamp stopped falling and the wax got up from the ground- I swear to you, it did- and there was Mob holding the lantern upright, except it was floating above his single outstretched finger. No wires, no nothing, just air. He sat it down on the closest table, and then looked at me. Just looked at me, with his dark eyes and his stoic face. And in that moment, my carefully constructed arguments, my years of doubt, my whole life of schooling towards the logical meant absolutely nothing. I _knew_.

He's got magic in his veins, that kid does. He used to sit in the corner so quietly you almost wouldn't have known he even existed, but he is and was the single most amazing thing I have ever, ever seen.

And you know what my first thought was about it? You know what my stupid, impulsive, selfish brain did with my new faith, with this sudden miracle that appeared to me like a vision- this child who had put all of his own faith in my worthless stories and pointless little lies, who beheld me like something other than a useless deserter?

I said to myself, "I can use this," and for the next four years, that is exactly what I did.

I built my whole life around a lie, and let Mob carry me with him on his coat tails. He was scared of his powers? I asked him to show me ghosts, used my influence to make him destroy them, and said he was learning something through it.

He found himself atop a kingdom because the Shadow Prince of The House of Black Vinegar was dumb enough to draw out Mob's magic? I let him take me to the top and wedged myself on the throne in his place, and said I was acting in his stead.

He got kidnapped by another kingdom? I weasled my way into the middle of that mess and threw my weight around using _his_ influence- and got to play the hero because not even mortal danger can make me keep my mouth shut.

I used him.

I stopped pursuing my dreams because of Mob, because I was weak. I've been a nobody bard in a nowhere place- I used to be a knight, damn it! I wanted to do something big with my life! What the Hell!

His ghost- not _his_ , but this little shitty snot bubble that follows him around like a lost puppy- he said to me, "Shigeo doesn't miss you at all," and laughed at me- and here I am, stuck between going home in shame and the same old bar I've been stuck at for years now to keep him safe, because he needed somebody- and "Shigeo doesn't miss you at all"?! that's all there is to say about it?

I gave up _everything_ for him, and he left me with _nothing_! I-!

I-!

 _I-!_

I've… I've had too much to drink.

Shit.

Shit!

 _God._

...Thank you. Thank you for listening to me. I'm sorry I went off on you. You wanted to hear about the king, and instead I sat here and yelled about me. Seems I've used Mob for my own gain yet again.

It's not interesting- it's never been interesting. I'm just not interesting, not as the Miraculous Knight- miraculous because I even became a knight in title at all- and not as plain ol' Reigen, and I know it. I'm supposed to tell other people's stories, not my own.

That's why I'm the bard.

It's.

It's my birthday.

Today. I'm twenty eight now.

I thought I'd indulge myself a little, I guess. Pretend like I made a difference one way or another, pretend that someone was my friend.

So, thanks.

Thank you.

Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.

Maybe. Or, um.

Nevermind.

Have a good night.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Author's Note: Written in honor of Reigen's birthday! Thanks for reading!


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